Monday, January 30, 2012

Most folks, myself included, have assumed that our country will need to build a new infrastructure if electric cars are going to become viable. The truth is that every home already has electricity. There are many other options, too. Many offices and retail locations have an outlet that can be used to charge an electric car. Every 7-11 has an ice machine and a spare outlet. I actually used that once before I felt comfortable that I'd reach my destination.

The nearest Park & Ride in Hamilton has 5 charging stations and each can charge two cars at once. That's $1.44 per "fill up". Every Nissan dealer offers free charging. The local Smart dealer has two free ones. Washington, DC just installed 80 of them. Individual EV (electric vehicle) owners even offer their own home outlets via the PlugShare network. Here are some maps showing availability.

I nearly landed on the Group W bench recently. The Hamilton Park & Ride charging stations were never available on weekdays because the spaces were always full of regular cars. So I went out there one Saturday to paint "Electric Only" on one of the ten spaces. We drove right past the police officer and set up. As soon as I began to paint, the officer came over and told me to stop. He was nice enough to overlook the crime so far and suggested I contact the county to request a sign.

That didn't seem very quick, especially considering I had the stencils and paint right there. So I called the next Monday and a left a message, wondering if anyone would ever even hear it. It turns out that officer G. had already gone into the government building and put in a good word.

A big Thank You to county supervisor Andrea McGimsey for working so tirelessly to get the whole Park & Ride + charging stations to happen. Another well-deserved Thank You goes to Loudoun County Energy Manager Najib Salehi who helped get it done and more recently got the signs in place to ensure the charging stations become useful. And I'm very grateful to officer G. for not arresting me and being so helpful.

The windmill is delayed because the original vendor kept our money and delivered nothing. Ouch. The new vendor looks to be more professional. Still, it's more like next year before we take action on that because ...

... in the mean time, the barn just got 2.6KW of peel and stick solar panels. They fit right into the bays of a standard standing seam roof. In the coming weeks, we'll get the trench dug from the house to the barn and install the wiring. They are so inconspicuous, you might not realize they are already installed in this photo:

Thursday, January 26, 2012

The show starts tomorrow and runs until February 5th. Our car is in the show, in the advanced technologies section. That section also has some college projects which look very impressive. There are production EV's, too, such as the Volt, Leaf, Fit, Coda and maybe Ford's Focus Electric. No sign of any of the three Tesla models.

I hope that some of the people seeing these firsthand will take the leap and get us one step closer to being free of OPEC.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

I've been driving the car most days on local errands or really any excuse to get out. It hasn't been easy, though. There's been no heater. The heated seats are nice and make it bearable. This weekend, I finished building and installing the electric heater. I'll drive it into the office on Tuesday.